During the 1920s, Dr. William and Ilise Schiff, an affluent German Jewish couple, engaged the au courant interior designer and Bauhaus architect Harry Rosenthal to create furniture for their spacious Berlin apartment. But in the early 1930s, as Nazism reared its ugly head, they were forced to flee Germany.

They settled in San Francisco, where, in 1937, they hired the Viennese-born modernist architect Richard Neutra to custom design an apartment duplex home in the city's Marina district that would showcase Rosenthal's furnishings. (They purchased the lot on Jefferson Street from Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom's grandfather.)

A room in the Schiff house as restored by architect Chad Overway, who purchased the home from Mrs. Schiff in 1993 and restored it over a 15-year period, adding contemporary furnishings. (Mark Darley, courtesy Chad Overway)

Several of the Rosenthal pieces -- a dressing table with a companion chair of tubular steel, a generously-proportioned, cube-shaped chair, a dark wooden desk so massive it would take four strong men to lift it and a sleek desk lamp -- are now on display, surrounded by enlarged photographs of the Schiffs' duplex, in "Designing Home: Jews and Midcentury Modernism," a new exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, through Oct. 6.

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Spanning from the 1920s and '30s through the 1960s with an emphasis on the postwar period, the show brings together vintage furnishings, minimalist tableware and an array of ceramics, textiles, posters and photos that represent the contributions of more than 35 Jewish architects, designers and patrons who had a profound impact on the aesthetics of American modernism. Their legacy -- an emphasis on informality and indoor/outdoor living, streamlined modern conveniences and appliances, an eschewing of ornamentation in favor of simplicity and a prizing of affordable, well-made design accessible to the masses -- continues to resonate today.

Many of these gifted innovators were American Jews born to immigrant families, while others, such as Neutra, had emigrated from Europe, seeking economic opportunities abroad or escaping persecution at home. He was among the first wave of such design professionals to arrive in America. He came in 1923, initially working with Frank Lloyd Wright before establishing a thriving West Coast practice that included airy, glass-walled family homes as well as mansions for Hollywood elite such as fellow Austrian and movie director Josef von Sternberg ("The Blue Angel"), who made seven films with Marlene Dietrich.

"In the '20s and '30s, Neutra's work is characterized by clean boxy volumes, steel framing, open floor plans, the use of industrial materials and an abundance of glass that creates an indoor-outdoor continuum," says exhibition curator Donald Albrecht. "In the 1940s, he begins to temper the machine aesthetic with natural materials, which made for warmer environments, and he defines the California look or style that would become so popular after the war."

That carefree outdoor California lifestyle is epitomized by Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House (1946), the Palm Springs vacation home of Pittsburgh department store magnate, Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., who, a decade earlier, had commissioned Wright's architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater. The Kaufmann house is captured in an elegant black-and-white photograph on view in the exhibition. It was taken by Julius Shulman, the same Jewish architectural photographer who shot pictures of the Schiff residence in the 1930s.

Architect Chad Overway purchased the house from Mrs. Schiff in 1993 for just under $1 million and spent the next 15 years rigorously restoring it, updating kitchens and bathrooms while returning the house to its stripped-down minimalist aesthetic.

"From an architectural standpoint it was intact," says Overway. "So, when I came in, I could recognize Neutra's intent. It was a matter of taking it back to its original state. Even before I started the remodeling effort, I lived in the building close to a year, and then started to do it piece by piece, going back to the original drawings and specs."

A room in the Schiff house as restored by architect Chad Overway, who purchased the home from Mrs. Schiff in 1993 and restored it over a 15-year period, adding contemporary furnishings. (Mark Darley, courtesy Chad Overway)

The Schiff duplex has two main apartments, each with steel-framed, floor-to-ceiling windows that face out to the street in front. Beneath them is a four-car garage. The lower apartment is 1,720 square feet, while the expansive one above it is a 2,500-square-foot, two-level space with a spiral staircase and polished aluminum railing, as well as a 700-square-foot master bedroom penthouse suite that opens onto an 800-square-foot rooftop deck with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Though it might appear that Rosenthal's bulky geometric furnishings, forged from dark woods, would be antithetical to Neutra's design principles, the "astronomical amount of light" that flows into the house, says Overway, may have mitigated the heaviness.

Mrs. Schiff "was a pretty strong woman, and Neutra saw a challenge there," Overway explains. One problem was how to move large objects into the house when a narrow entrance provided the only access. Neutra's ingenious solution: a removable window next to the steel-and-glass front door window -- which allowed the furniture to be transported in and out without risk of damage.

"Neutra was a philosophical, highly intelligent man who was pursuing how to create great livable environments," says Overway. "This house is a testament to his ability to work for a very demanding client within the confines of a difficult site and produce a fantastic piece of architecture."